Moving Forward

nice run! I saw the NAMI event on the news last night. It should be really nice :)

I wish I could come.

Extra speedier pace than ususal.

Good job on the mileage board :) You still have me beat in about a million other ways!

Hey there,

I saw your comments and way to go! I haven't been doing well on the running thing yet. I need to follow your lead!!! Have a great day!

I noticed that you have no problem running sub-9:00 pace, and often naturally choose it during a run, but at the same time have difficulty racing at anything faster than 8:00. This is abnormal. For a comparison, I rarely would choose to run sub-7:00 in a relaxed run, but can race a 10 K at 5:18 pace. To address the issue - you can probably start the following this week, and continue it after your legs recover from St. George:

Once a week during your regular run do 5 1 minute accelerations. Go fast, not all out, but you should feel some quickness and a little bit of a bear on your back towards the end as well. Take as much rest as you need in between and run as slow as your body wants to. Run your normal mileage that day, and other days as well. If feeling fatigued the day after, still run the normal mileage, but slower.

The assumption is that you have aerobically conditioned yourself to support higher speeds, but your nervous system does not believe you can go faster. So we try to trick it.

Sasha,

I think I understand what you think I should do. On one day of my week I do 5 1 minute accelerations. Don't go all out but go quite a bit faster.

I guess I don't understand why having difficulty racing at a pace faster than 8:00 is abnormal? I have never been a very fast runner. I wonder if I'm too old to ever be faster LOL. I'm not running St. George, but I will be out of town some of this week. I will try and incorporate the accelerations into my week. Thanks as always for you input.

Lori

Difficulty racing at any pace is not abnormal, but difficulty racing only 12% faster than your comfortable training pace is abnormal. Either the comfort of the training pace is deceiving, or there is some mental or neurological block that keeps you from racing faster. But your training pace has been consistent over few months, you do not seem to overtrain, and day after day naturally choose that pace. So I think your training pace is right, it is the racing pace that is not.